Herman Barnes was executed by the State of Virginia for a double murder
According to court documents Herman Barnes would rob a grocery store and in the process of the armed robbery would murder the store owner Clyde Jenkins, 72, and a clerk, Mohammad Afifi, 42.
Herman Barnes would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Herman Barnes would be executed by lethal injection on November 13 1995
Herman Barnes Photos
Herman Barnes Case
A man who shot and killed two supermarket workers during an attempted holdup 10 years ago was executed by injection tonight, marking the third time in seven weeks that Virginia has put a condemned inmate to death.
Herman Charles Barnes, 31, was pronounced dead at 10:11 p.m. here at Greensville Correctional Center, operations officer Wayne Brown said, just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his final plea for life. Gov. George Allen (R) delayed the execution an hour while awaiting the court’s decision, which was unanimous.
Barnes, who was visited by relatives in the hours before his death, said, “Thank you, Jesus” just before a lethal dose of chemicals was injected into his arm.
Barnes’s execution was the fifth in Virginia this year, matching the most carried out in any year in this state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Virginia, which since then has put more inmates to death than all but two states, would surpass that mark of five in one year if an execution scheduled for next month goes forward as planned
The quickened pace at the death chamber here near the North Carolina line stems in part from new state policies intended to shorten the appeals process that has left some killers sitting on death row for a decade or more before their sentences are actually imposed.
At one point, Virginia had nine executions scheduled for the final four months of 1995, but most of them have been delayed by the courts.
Barnes, originally from Philadelphia, entered a supermarket in Hampton, Va., in June 1985 armed with a gun and wearing a nylon stocking over his head. Store owner Clyde Jenkins, 73, struggled with him and was shot twice. Mohammed Afifi, 42, a clerk who had immigrated from Jerusalem, rushed in from the back of the store, jumped on Barnes and was shot. Barnes then turned and shot Jenkins a third time in the neck as the owner struggled to get up. Jenkins died two weeks later
Barnes’s sentence was overturned by a federal judge last year on the grounds that the prosecution had withheld the fact that a gun was found under Jenkins’s body, depriving the defense of evidence to argue that Barnes had faced an armed man. However, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court and reinstated the sentence in June.
Barnes was the 29th prisoner put to death in Virginia since capital punishment was restored. Virginia executed triple-murderer Mickey Wayne Davidson last month and killer-for-hire Dennis W. Stockton in September. Coleman Wayne Gray, who abducted and shot a store manager in the head six times, is scheduled to be put to death Dec. 14. The only other time Virginia executed five people in a single year was in 1993. Only Texas and Florida execute more prisoners
